How to Setup reCAPTCHA For WPForms on Your WordPress Website?

Do you receive many spams form submissions? Are you tired of seeing submissions from automated bots? Worry no more. Because WPForms can help you build spam-free WordPress contact forms. Spam-free contact forms mean improved lead generation with quality traffic. Use reCAPTCHA for WPForms and filter spams from real leads.

Read this guide to understand what is reCAPTCHA, why you should use it, and how can you include it in your WordPress forms.

WPForms allow you to create spam-free contact forms without using CAPTCHA, using reCAPTCHA or using a Custom Captcha addon. Besides, a hidden tool called honeypot is also available to secure your contact forms. But for now, you must try reCAPTCHA and ensure that the contact forms you receive are genuine and credible. 

What Is reCAPTCHA?

reCAPTCHA is a WordPress plugin that provides effective security solutions to prevent spam entries on your WordPress website forms. It lets real people pass through ease. In simple words, site visitors need to check the reCAPTCHA section to prove they’re human. They need to confirm that they are not a robot. This is easy to do for people but difficult for the bots. 

You can us e the reCAPTCHA plugin for registration, login, password, comments, contact forms, recovery, queries, and more. 

Why Use reCAPTCHA?

There are several ways reCAPTCHA can be beneficial for your website and your business. 

1. Block Spam: The first and foremost benefit of using reCAPTCHA is that as you verify that a human being is submitting a form, you avoid and block all automated spam attempts. Moreover, users notice the added security and feel that it is secure to fill out their details. This, in turn, helps to reduce form abandonment. 
2. Easy to use: CAPTCHA was made with the idea to do two things – keep spam away and assist machines with the translation of non-digital books. However, it wasn’t easy for users to provide answers for jumbled text. Google then improved the CAPTCHA tool, offering reCAPTCHA v2 and making it much easier for users. On this, users just need to put their mouse over the checkbox giving the tool a verification that it is not an automated spam bot. This made it easier for users to prove that they are not robots. 

Towards the end of the year 2018, Google introduced reCAPTCHA v3, which is based on a behind-the-scenes scoring system. This version allows you to identify abusive traffic all over the website without users taking any action. 

reCAPTCHA v2 provides two options – invisible reCAPTCHA and interactive checkboxes. Through this guide, you will learn how to add reCAPTCHA v2’s invisible reCAPTCHA or interactive checkboxes to your WP Contact forms. 

Adding reCAPTCHA Checkbox to your WPForms

Here’s a simple step-by-step guide to adding an interactive reCAPTCHA checkbox to WPForms.

Step 1: Create a WordPress Contact Form

To begin, you need to install and activate the WPForms plugin. If you know how to do this, you can skip to the next section. If you don’t, here are brief instructions to help you install the plugin in WordPress. 

You can install plugins on WordPress.com only if you have a business plan. However, if you use a self-hosted WordPress.org website, you can instantly install any plugin.

Use the plugin search to find a WordPress Contact Form plugin. Many developers have offered different contact forms and you can choose an appropriate one depending on your requirements. On the WordPress Admin, click on Plugins>Add New. Search for the plugin.

Once you see the plugin in the search results, click on Install Now. After installing the plugin, you will receive a success message with a link to activate the plugin. 

Next, you need to prepare a WordPress contact form. This should be easy. Click on Add New, drag and drop the fields you’d like to use in your form from the left panel and use the appropriate labels. You can give a custom name to every form you create. 

Step 2: Configure reCAPTCHA Settings

Now, it is time to configure reCAPTCHA settings in WordPress. 

For this, visit WPForms>Settings. Select the reCAPTCHA tab.

In the type section, choose v2 reCAPTCHA. This will integrate an interactive reCAPTCHA box in your contact form.

Even though Google offers reCAPTCHA for free, you need a site key and secret key. Google’s reCAPTCHA setup page helps you easily generate site and secret keys.

As you visit the setup page, click on the Admin Console button. This is located on the top right corner.

Enter your Google username and password to log in. After logging in successfully, you can register your site for reCAPTCHA. 

Click on the plus sign to complete website registration. 

You will see a Label field in which you need to fill your website’s name. This information will be used by you to identify the website if you ever need to get the keys again. 

If you have other websites registered with Google reCAPTCHA, a list with their identification names will be available. 

Next, select the reCAPTCHA type you want to add to your website. For this guide, we will choose reCAPTCHA v2 and then ‘I am not a robot’ checkbox.

Post this, you need to fill in your website’s domain, like example.com. 

Click on the Submit button to save your site. Make sure you check the box to Accept the reCAPTCHA Terms of Service. 

The site key and secret key will be provided. 

Return to the WPForms>Settings page after copying the site key and secret key. Under reCAPTCHA settings, paste the required key in their designated fields. 

Click on Save Settings. 

Step 3: Add reCAPTCHA to WPForms

Now that your form is created, go to Settings>General in the form editor. You will see an option to Enable Google Checkbox v2 reCAPTCHA. Check the box. 

Finally, click on Save.

Step 4: Adding Contact Form to WordPress

You can add forms to any location on your website – sidebar, pages, or blog posts. Create a new post and use the Add WPForms icon inside of a block. 

From the dropdown menu, choose the form you wish to add.

Complete and publish your post and your form will successfully appear on your website.

That’s it. Now sit back and enjoy receiving quality leads. Check more details about WPForms here.